...what the hell was his problem?

How do you make this sort of shitty art? Is it Photoshop?

patriarchy. enough said.

>Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations.

Besides the obvious vengeance for his leg, he also saw Moby-Dick as a conscious moral being inclined to evil.
Ahab also saw himself as a kind of king and almost a God.
>talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.
He believed he could stamp out evil with one heroic stroke (a classic mistake made over and over throughout history).

>two homos trying to kill white males full of testo

what did he mean by this

Monomania

Me on the left.

>tfw only on chapter 35
Wow spoilers much

basically rebelling against god/nature/whateveryouwannacallit and got put in his place. he needed to let the fuck go.

kek

Well, OP's pic doesn't actually happen in the book.
It's Fedallah who gets strapped to the whale by the lines.

He was a transcendentalist and thought he was a God.

>"His great genius is declared in his doing nothing in particular to prove it."

This image is deeply upsetting

this

...

>Queequeg pls notice me

>he also saw Moby-Dick as a conscious moral being inclined to evil.

Totally disagree, and in fact I think I'll be backed up by a slightly different reading of exactly that first passage you offered. His "spiritual exasperations" aren't struggles of "I am good and must defeat this evil," but rather "I am not fulfilled and must seek this answer."

I don't think anyone will suggest there is a single symbol we can ascribe to the whale, but I think a big one is capital-T Truth, God, etc. He's the "Knowledge" of reality which Ahab is willing to fight and die for, while recognizing (1) he's kind of crazy for being in the fight in the first place; (2) it IS a fight; the whale is a conscious contender and doesn't "want" to be found/known; (3) he's really not meant to win the fight. Ahab isn't a king or a God; he's hunting God, or his own image of God (which I mention because he's hardly a run-of-the-mill churchgoing Christian, and obviously has his own conception of religion):

>“There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee [lightning], thou clear spirit, to whom all thy eternity is but time… Through thee, thy flaming self, my scorched eyes do dimly see it… I read my sire… I leap with thee, I burn with thee; would fain be welded with thee; defyingly I worship thee!”
>“In each event…some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!… To me, the whale is that wall… Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond… That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him”

And I think he pretty clearly doesn't think himself a god:
>“What…commands me; that…I so keep pushing…recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven…how then can this one small heart beat…unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I”
>“Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act’s immutably decreed…I am the Fates’ lieutenant; I act under orders”

He's on an impossible quest, and he knows it, but he obviously thinks there's no better way to live. I think it's a conception of humanity as rightly continuing to struggle and search in spite of never "finding" or "reaching" anything definite. We can't "Know" as God knows, but we fight for scraps anyway because that's what it means to live a human life, and in a very Platonic style, it is those very lives which impose those limitations on us; our deaths will give us knowledge (of God?) that we can never experience in life:

>“Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.”

Not him but thanks for posting

Good to find something substantial in this shithole now and then

great post user

Didn't Ahab also get snagged?
Someone post an explanation of Fedallah as Ahab's shadow by the way. Was he meant to be some kind of spiritual reflection of Ahab?

Thanks for the contribution my man

A
FUCKING
WHITE WHALE

No but seriously. I didn't read the book. How did he get there and why?

>And I think he pretty clearly doesn't think himself a god:
Maybe not outright, but his quest goes directly against God and since he feels he is up for the task he at least sees himself on a similar level:
>"There is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one Captain that is lord over the Pequod. – On deck!"

If you remember father maple at the begging talking about Jonah and how obeying God means disobeying yourself.

In the book Ahab does get snagged and pulled underwater, but nothing like OPs pic happens in the book. The image of Ahab strapped to the body of the whale comes from the Gregory Peck movie.

I don't know wtf to make of Fedallah honestly. In the book he get's compared to the devil.

Only Stubb compares him to the devil. Fadellah is literally a stowaway, not uncommon in those times. Wit yo punkass

>a stowaway
great thanks for completely explaining the fedallah character no other information is necessary he is just a random stowaway that Melville added for no reason

Knowledge is knowing that Ahab is the captain.

Wisdom is knowing that Ahab is not the captain.

>In the book Ahab does get snagged and pulled underwater, but nothing like OPs pic happens in the book.

Are you sure? I distinctly remember this having this mental image and I've never seen any MB movie. But then again I was doin' a lot of drugs when I read the novel, so I'll take your word for it.

MD*

Fedallah is the one who gets strapped to the whale by the ropes.

In the movie they conflated the two events, and it probably makes more sense to do that for the big screen.

But in the book, Ahab's death is awesome because it's so anticlimactic. He just gets yoinked out of the boat without making as sound and he's gone